Unsecured borrowing by consumers was the highest since 2008, the three-month period when activity peaked. The number of home loan approvals crept above the 50,000 level, well above the recent low of just under 44,500 in June.

One explanation being touted around is that higher borrowing might reflect consumers seeking to maintain spending patterns in the face of falling incomes. But in that case borrowing should have been higher when the squeeze from inflation was really intense six months ago.

The data coincided with a period in which falling inflation has helped ease the squeeze on real incomes and came a month after the Bank of England launched its funding for lending scheme, which is explicitly designed to prompt banks to lend more cheaply.

If the pickup in lending activity is the result of these two factors then there is good reason to believe that last week's strong growth data for the third quarter was not a flash in the pan. This explanation should certainly not be ruled out, although one or two notes of caution need to be sounded.

The first is that the growth in unsecured credit and mortgage demand comes from an extremely low base. In the bubble years before the crash, it was common for the monthly increase in consumer borrowing to top £10bn: last month it was £1.2bn. Nor is the housing market in any danger of over-heating any time soon. Even after September's increase, approvals are running at about half their pre-crash rate.

The second reason to be slightly wary is that the drop in the annual inflation rate has led to a smaller gap between price increases and wage increases, but has not eliminated it altogether. What's more, the drop in mortgage rates attributable to funding for lending is modest and so far has left first-time buyers – key to a sustained recovery in the property market – virtually untouched.

It may be that consumers feel a bit more confident now that inflation is no longer running at 5%-plus. They may also be encouraged by the clear signal that the base rate will not be rising from 0.5% any time soon. But it would be unwise to claim too much on the basis of one month's figures.